Can you pretend you’re not reading this as I type it, or that you don’t exist?
I think you know I’m aware of what you’re all about, that I know what you’re up to. I’m like a lot of people who are thinking about you these days. I’ve seen a lot of movies and I’ve read some books. You know I’ve been down and out.

You are portrayed and written up. People watch, listen and read about you all the time — you play out their cliches of conscience — and the horrible results of their most rational conclusions.

You’d think this wasn’t plausible, especially if we’re all just a kind of grease in a mechanical reflex these days, an infinite fleshy interface. But this world has gone awry. If you were here with me now you’d probably tell me it’s always been this way and always will be.

Your voice is heard before you appear — from fog, mist, amongst the brambles, under ice, from beneath the waves, above the clouds, from shadows and smoke. Your grounds are obscured as light and dark collapse into each other. Your realms are like the simulations that constitute our memories.

You reveal the future as the past and the present as illusory, but most of the time it’s all in quotations, like the dialogue in a screenplay, or the scene in a snow-bubble.

When thinking feels ridiculous and the passage of time becomes unbearable — that’s when I want you to be real.